


The Home Fires Burning

by Fire_Sign



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, WW2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-08-12 21:13:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7949392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fire_Sign/pseuds/Fire_Sign
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em> Keep the Home Fires Burning,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>While your hearts are yearning.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Though your lads are far away</em>
  <br/>
  <em>They dream of home.</em>
</p><p>------</p><p>A short collection of Phrack drabbles set in Melbourne during WW2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Home Fires Burning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Whilenotwriting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whilenotwriting/gifts).



> It is @whilenotwriting's birthday! And what better present than a bit of World War Two angst? I think there might eventually be a long fic in this--once I write the six before it on the list--but since there is a long tradition of gifting items still on the needles and taking it back for completion, the drabble version will have to do. And we will studiously ignore the similarities to @afterdinnerminx's story, because the fandom hivemind is a scary place.
> 
> To @whilennotwriting, for being in the European timezone (sometimes), an inspirer of angst (always), a partner in plotting (when she's not busy doing a million other things), and for being an amazing friend. Happy birthday, lovely!
> 
> Title comes from the song "Keep the Home Fires Burning", for reasons that will eventually be clear. And by eventually I mean right away.

** September 1939 **

When Jack walked into the parlour, he found Phryne studying several newspapers intently.

“We’ll need to get married,” she said without looking up.

“What?”

If she’d declared that she’d just inherited the throne of England he’d have been less surprised.

“In case something were to happen.”

He sighed.

“Nothing is going to happen, love.”

Her gaze was piercing. “If you really believed that, Jack, you wouldn’t have called me love.”

Which was one of those irritatingly accurate assessments she was so good at making. He sighed again, and she turned back to the papers before her.

“I’ve already looked up several itineraries for travelling to the continent. It might be advisable to land in England first and go from there--”

“Phryne, I can’t go to Europe.”

She waved a hand dismissively.

“Nobody wanted it to come to this, Jack, but you can’t expect me to believe that you’re staying here. I know you’re not as young as you were, but I know some people--”

“No. I _can’t_ go to Europe.”

He’d never explicitly told her that his position in Intelligence had never technically ended--it was a mere formality when they met, and while he’d hinted around the matter several times once the rumours of another war began he hadn’t been allowed to say anything. He willed her to understand with a flash of insight, and he wasn’t disappointed.

“You… _can’t_ … because you’re needed here?”

“Precisely.”

She raked her fingers through her hair, flustered. Jack remembered wishing she would be, just on occasion, when they had first met; he found he’d lost the taste of it.

“I… I don’t know what to--are you certain?”

“Unfortunately.”

She moved some papers around, not looking at him.

“If I go--”

“We both know you need to go, love.”

She looked up at him, smiling wanly.

“This will be the longest I’m away from you in a decade, Jack.”

His heart constricted at her words. An indefinite absence, no certainty she would return. It wasn’t fair. It didn’t even occur to him to ask her not to go.

“Then hurry back,” he said quietly.

On the really lonely nights, he remembered the last weeks they had--the terribly pragmatic wedding she had insisted upon “in case the worst happened”, the few precious hours they had managed to carve out between commitments, the last breakfast in bed, the slow drive of the Hispano to the docks. The final goodbye, both of them leaving so much unsaid.

“Be careful,” she had ordered him, smoothing the lapel of his coat.

He had caught her hand, brought it to his lips; Phryne had swayed towards him slightly, a warm, contented smile in her eyes.

“I’ll be careful,” he had promised. “Come home.”

And then she was gone.

 

* * *

 

** December 1940 **

It had taken him six weeks before he stopped reaching for her every morning, eight before he stopped laying out the newspaper for her when he was done. The first letter that arrived was scented with her perfume, and he slept with it under his pillow until it faded; the second had been waylaid in some remote stop for too long to carry it at all. The piano became out of tune without his notice, her music collection gathered dust, he bought cherries on his way home from work before remembering that nobody left in the house ate them--he gave them to the Collins children instead.

Slow and inevitable, her presence slipped from his life in little ways, details he had failed to notice--or had taken for granted, becoming complacent in the face of their certainty--until they were gone.

Over a year in, he still stayed on his side of the bed and kept an empty space on his desk, as if she would sashay into the tiny little office he shared with another Intelligence officer and take her perch with a bright smile.

Her letters were erratic and superficial, but when they came they were laced with “Jack love”--she had never called him that. ‘Darling’ was her preferred endearment; ‘love’ was his, used sparingly, as if there was a finite number of times he would be allowed to say it, more precious even than her name. In utterly Phryne-like fashion, she used it with abandon; the message was clear--she was worried for him, knew he worried for her, would not let life go unlived. He memorised every one, in fear they might one day fade from the page. She had managed to telephone him for his birthday, her voice falsely bright and utterly exhausted, a hurried exchange that he clung to whenever her letters were too far apart.

He had gone to war a newlywed, the first time, and it had cost him the marriage. Some days he wondered whether history would repeat itself; on others, he just hoped for a chance to find out.

 

* * *

 

**October 1941 **

Second anniversary gifts were meant to be cotton. He would have settled for words.

It had been nearly four months. His position meant that he would hear if anything had happened, or so he had told Jane one evening over dinner--she was visiting from Sydney, debating whether to volunteer herself; she very carefully did not ask what that position was, so he didn’t have to lie. He didn't ask what she had chosen to do, so that she wouldn't have to either.

The point remained, the reassurance was likely true, and all that fluttered back to him was the occasional rumour of a French heiress who had spent several years in English boarding schools cutting a devastating swath through the hearts of high-ranking officials; he half-expected that she’d become a Scarlet Pimpernel figure. It had been awhile since he’d heard even that.

He came home late, both a habit and necessity. There was a bottle of Scotch he’d been saving; in what was a typical act of prescience, Mr. Butler had left it on the side--Jack could spy it through the parlour door.

“A gift arrived for you, sir,” he said, taking Jack’s hat and coat.

Jack moved into the parlour, seeing the huge flower arrangement.

Sturt’s Desert Rose.

Australian Cotton.

 

* * *

 

  **June 1942 **

It was nearly two in the morning when Jack returned to Wardlow. There’d been four bombings in Darwin in as many days, and he’d spent all of them in his office, catching a kip when he could and trying to process the information as it came in. His eyes were already half-shut as he walked into the completely dark bedroom, his clothing discarded as he walked. In hindsight, he really should have noticed the body in his bed before he lay down beside it.

He did not.

Thankfully, said body gave a soft exhale as he settled beneath the sheets and he resisted his first impulse to strike the intruder in the solar plexus. The scent hit him half a second later--there were times he left a dab of her favourite perfumes on the pillows, but this was something else--he stretched a tentative hand across the small space in disbelief.

“Phryne?” he whispered.

“Sleep, darling,” came a murmured reply, so quiet he thought he might be hallucinating from exhaustion.

Well, if that was what his mind was conjuring, he could think of worst fantasies to have. He scooted to lay an arm over the woman in his bed and fell into an easy slumber.

When he woke up the next morning, he could feel very familiar hands on his thighs.

“Please tell me I have you for a few days,” he begged, not daring to open his eyes.

There was a soft chuckle from beneath the doona.

“Better than that, Jack,” she replied, scraping her teeth against his leg, and he began to believe she was real.

“A week? Two?”

He presumed she was being moved to the Pacific for whatever reason; after months of bombings to Australia’s northern coast, the need for intelligence had become pressing. The doona popped back, and he saw her face for the first time in nearly three years; her hair was longer and he could see hints of grey, and the laugh lines around her eyes had become more pronounced.

“I’ve been transferred to Melbourne,” she said softly. “There wasn’t a desk to sit on in the whole of Europe, and when an old friend asked…” a tiny shrug “...well, we’ve always done our best work together.”

“Is that so, Miss Fisher?” he managed to choke out. “And here I was, just the other day, thinking my desk was missing some nuisance.”

He gave her a tremulous smile, and she rose up to kiss him.


End file.
